Published on the occasion of his eponymous solo exhibition at Nomas Foundation, Rome, Road Back to Relevance gives insight into Dan Rees’s practice since roughly 2006. The exhibition brought together groups of works—paintings, videos, installations, and photography—that had never before been viewed simultaneously, and reveals the complex nature of the artist’s research.

The title refers to a slide presentation made by the artist in collaboration with an advertising strategist and designer that, by charting the course of a specific solidarity campaign between Wales and Nicaragua started in the 1980s, questions how pre-“clicktivist” modes of social engagement, activism, and international solidarity can remain relevant today. As Dieter Roelstraete writes in his essay contribution: “The work of Dan Rees (born in 1982 in Swansea, United Kingdom) touches upon a wide range of topics, subjects, and issues, but one dominant, recurring preoccupation doubtlessly concerns the politics of taste. ‘Taste’—its cultural corollaries, its political over- and undertones, and most importantly its social sources—is one of Rees’s preferred problems. And where it is addressed most directly and unapologetically—that is to say, in the so-called Artex paintings—is exactly where his work becomes most willingly, egregiously ‘problematic.’” Texts by Dieter Roelstraete, Ben Gregory, Saim Demircan.

Dan Rees
‘Road Back to Relevance’, 2016
English
Edited by Ilaria Bombelli
Published by Mousse Publishing, Milan
Printed by Artigianelli, Italy
Designed by Per Törnberg
Publication photographed by Nick Ash
Softcover
20×26 cm
7⅞×10¼ in
144 pp.
ISBN 9788867492176